Making Audiences Matter - MIT's Futures of Entertainment Panel

November 21, 2008

Panel members are: Kim Moses (Executive Producer, Ghost Whisperer), Vu Nguyen (VP of Business Development, Crunchyroll.com), Gail De Kosnik (UC Berkeley, Strategies for a Digital Age), Kevin Slavin (Area Code), and Joshua Green (Moderator: MIT Convergence Culture Consortium). 

Who is the audience for contemporary media?

Audiences today are not merely audiences -- they are creators. And they think of themselves as such. How can audiences can be thought as participants -- or fellow workers - in industry?

Nguyen: Each audience has a different segment into media. Some people get it through TV some through the Internet -- and in some countries the primary means of accessing media is via mobile phone. Our primary audience has a lot of time, and they've very young. They also use the Internet as their primary source of accessing media.

Slavin: The traditional media model had some constraints. Now that those constraints are not there, relying on the traditional media model could make a product lose value -- because the audience can be anyone.

Green: We still have these mass audience models. How can we negotiate that tension?

Moses: We're one of the TV shows that caters to a new media model. Traditionally, people simply put a TV show out there and see if anyone watches it. With The Ghost Whisperer, we are rolling the show out on various media platforms, and if they get traction there, then rolling out larger campaigns on those channels. In our world the networks are so huge -- and move so slowly. We know that 'he who pulls the trigger first on the Internet wins', so they're two totally different things. Initially, people felt that putting something on television and the Internet simultaneous

Another thing that we're doing is realizing that the audience doesn't have to go to the TV show, but that the TV show should come to the audience.

Moses: I've foud that there are people out there that like a certain piece of media and will consume it in any media form that it exists in.

Kosnik: We have tons of screens. Some at work - some at home. We have USB drives. How people consume is different for everyone -- and there are so many ways to consume now.

Moses: The Ghost Whisperer is not allowed to be streamed online. So as much as it innovates and has an online community, it is still constrained to that space.

Nguyen: Compare that to Anime -- one of the most pirated forms of media out there. There are time/space barriers and language as well. But add this to language barriers. Fans translate media for others.

Slavin: There are different types of engagement -- and those are different types of audiences."When you provide a backchannel for a TV show along with that show, ratings go up.

Moses: I don't know if people understand the value of what we're doing yet. I beleive the view of the value of this is changing. It used to be that when my partner and I would talk about this, they'd say "yah yah yah...we don't wanna hear about it", and now they come up and ask us to explain what we're doing.

Measuring Success

Nguyen: The great thing about this is that there are metrics everywhere that makes it easy to see if you've failed. So there's no use in wasting money on something that doesn't work. Traditional Anime has to pay Cartoon Network to get their shows on there. There is no revenue model for them -- no profit -- all of the money goes to Cartoon Network. The only way they've been able to make money in the past is with DVD's, but now with the economy the way it is -- DVD sales are going down. So what is left? The Internet.

Slavin: There are greater and greater expectations surrounding mediamakers -- what happens when mediamakers can't live up to these expectations? Is this a problem? 

Slavin also designed a game that was to be played while watching the Sopranos.

I'm speaking next. Very nervous, but I'm sure it will be great once up on the stage.

More updates soon. Thanks for tuning in!

Comments

[Ana Domb]

Thank you for liveblogging!!! you are awesome and will be great on stage. Very happy that you came.